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Timber Wolf

With no sound except crunching snow under foot, a small band of travelers make their way ever upward toward the silent solitude of the high timber.

In a scene from the Appalachian Mountains of the eighteenth century at a time when wolves roamed the eastern forests, and buffalo and elk gathered in great herds, I have placed a friend and fellow buckskinner who preserves today the spirit of the first hunters and trappers who crossed the mighty Blue Ridge Mountains to live and die as the creatures of the wilderness. Shown with wolves as spirit brothers, the woodsman shares their tracking ability, knowledge of the woods and survival skills. A conservationist who judges a hunter by what he doesn't kill, he breaks camp "...leaving nothing but footprints and taking nothing but memories."

I have spent many evenings at his campfire learning more of the mountain men of the past, the flickering firelight reflecting from buckskins, gun barrels and bearded faces as twentieth century twilight dissolves into eighteenth century darkness.